Projects · 2006-06-27
I have a long list of projects, some of which are now two or three years old, that I never had enough time to finish (or in some cases start). If you are interested on working on or using any of these, send an e-mail to umdhub at gmail dot com.
There’s no profit motive here, but if you want give something to the UMD community and screw with the university a bit, some of these could be fun.
One thing I do not need is someone to run a hub, we have plans taking care of that already.
Forums
We originally conceived having forums as a way for the people on the hub to flame each other out of real-time, but now that the hub is gone, we see forums as a key way of disseminating information.
Requires: UNIX, installing and maintaining forum software and associated databases.
Pick-a-prof Replacement
Pick-a-prof is a service that allows students to see the sorts of grades professors give before registering for courses (e.g. the number of A’s, B’s, C’s,...). The service used to be free for UMD students, but now requires a small fee. I obtained all of the same information directly from the university, but I haven’t had the time to put the spreadsheets into a database and make the information accessible from the web. I want an easy to use website that allows students to search by course or professor and see graphs, much like Pick-a-prof.
Requires: SQL, PHP/Perl/Python, HTML, CSS.
Griping about the University
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the University of Maryland, but I think there a lot of things that could improve about it that don’t get publicized. Housing, food, police, students fees, parking – all things that get griped about every SGA campaign, but that always disappear soon afterwards. I happen to own the domain umdsucks.com that could be used for exactly this purpose.
Requires: HTML, CSS, sardonic wit, solid command of the English language.
Decentralized p2p
One of the many flaws behind Direct Connect was its reliance on a central hub. Removing the hub effectively shuts down the entire network.
Even IRC is only a stop-gap measure. While we can move all of the hub’s functionality to a server out of the university’s control, traffic shaping would quickly eliminate it.
One of the nice things about using Direct Connect over other decentralized networks like Gnutella was the speed and security brought by having a restricted community. I am working on a p2p system that would provide grouping for its users without a single point of failure using JXTA , a library developed by Sun. The program would provide at least the functionality that a Direct Connect hub would have, adding security and decentralization features.
Even if I don’t get any help, I’ll post updates on my progress with the program.
Requires: Java.
"Magical" Internet Relay Chat · 2006-06-02
I missed the mindless chatter of the hub, so after some prodding, I looked into IRC as a replacement.
The original plan was to have a local IRC server, but I ran into two problems:
- The university frowns on running IRC servers. I might get away with it if I restricted it to only UMD IP addresses since it wouldn’t be a public IRC server.
- When I set it up, Windows clients couldn’t connect. Clients on OS X and Linux did just fine as did Java clients in Windows, but no native client on Windows worked. Some Googling revealed that the problem is actually with winsock (Windows socket interface); how the public IRC servers deal with it, I do not know.
Since that failed, we’re sitting on #umd on irc.rizon.net for now.
The Death of a Hub · 2006-05-19
Two weeks ago, I received a request for a meeting with the Coordinator of Nethics, Amy Ginther, and the IT Security Director, Gerry Sneeringer, to discuss my Direct Connect hub. Apparently, an anonymous complainant sent the following e-mail to the university:
Subject: Illegal file sharing hub mainly used by UMD students
I am concerned about the existence of a “DirectConnect” hub that has been created to allow the sharing of files, illegally, amongst the student population at the University of Maryland, College Park campus. As far as I can tell, the “hub” is hosted at the IP address of 129.2.216.191 which according to the nslookup I ran is an on-campus IP address, or at least an address provided by the University through VPN. The address resolves to hub.student.umd.edu and is also accessed via the address umdhub.com
I also believe the “hub” to be run by a person named
snip. I got the name from a whois search on the domain name umdhub.com the results are below. As you can see from the results, it seems to be based out of an off campus apartment on knox road.
This complaint is completely invalid under the law. The only party that can file a copyright infringement complaint is the copyright holder, and the complaint must be made under the penalty of perjury. It is unknown whether the complainant is a student. The e-mail originates from a Hotmail account with no identifying information.
Monday, I met with Mr. Sneeringer and Ms. Ginther. While they agreed that what both the university and I was doing was probably legal, they had been given instructions to have the hub shut down.
Friday, I met with Jeff Huskamp, the university CIO/VP for IT, the two that I met with Monday, and a PR person. News of the complaint had spread far and wide, reaching some of the highest officials at the university. This meeting reiterated the statement that the hub would have to go, legal or not.
Tuesday will bring changes to the acceptable use guidelines that includes a statement about running a server to facilitate copyright infringement. Until now, I have broken no laws and no university rules, but when the guidelines change, that will no longer be the case. The unversity will maintain its current position however and only actively investigate file sharing allegations after a complaint is filed rather than actively seeking it out.
I can understand why the university has chosen this route. Combined with the threatening letter sent early this month, the complaint has caused a bit of a panic, even though the university is not doing anything illegal or even wrong. Even if they were willing to stick to their guns, there is little doubt that industry lobbyists would go to Annapolis, pull some strings, and make like life difficult for C. D. Mote. I can’t fault university officials for protecting their jobs before my hub. It is disappointing, but expected.
The only people to really blame are the original complainant and the various entertainment cartels. Between lobbyists and lawyers, it is extremely difficult to fight the entertainment industry. While I am in a legally defensible position, I do not have the time or money to go through the sort of judicial charade the the industry would pull me into. Rather than settle for a quick fight in court, they would undoubtedly make proceedings as long as possible with the intent to bankrupt me from legal fees before I could win.
I have little doubt that there will be another hub next year. In fact, there will probably be several. I encourage people to not split the userbase and to support a single hub at a time. There will probably be more complaints, and once one hub goes down, another can go up in its place. We may also develop alternative technologies to replace Direct Connect altogether, but make no promises if or when that will arrive.
It has been a fun two and a half years running the hub and I appreciate the support I have gotten from the vast majority of people around campus, students and otherwise.
CDigix's "Privacy" Policy · 2006-03-13
So the university just signed a deal with CDigix, a music and movie subscription service geared towards college students.
I’m not really sure what kind of “deal” this is, since the university is supposedly not paying a dime for the privilege of having CDigix’s service and since the “deal” is not exclusive. Fortunately, the non-exclusiveness leaves the door open for better , more reputable companies.
But hey, at $2/month, CDigix couldn’t be that bad, could it? Besides having to deal with bad quality, digital restriction encumbered Windows Media Audio files that I couldn’t even use on my iPod without having to pay extra, it seemed like it was worth trying out.
So I went to the poorly designed, flash laden website and decided to sign up. Rather than blindly accepting the privacy policy though, I decided to flip through and see what it said.
We may share information with other reputable companies or organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting.
Hmm… that seemed a bit sketchy. I wonder what kind of information they might be sharing.
We use the e-mail addresses that we collect for various purposes, including to send out information relating to Cdigix and our services.
That doesn’t seem too bad; I might get spammed a bit by the company, but it doesn’t seem that they’re going to sell it to every Rolex/Viagra-peddling Nigerian 419 scammer out there.
We may use the postal addresses that we collect to send periodic mailings from with information on new products and services or upcoming events. From time to time, we may also make our customer postal addresses list available to other reputable companies or organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting.
From time to time, we may also make our customer telephone number list available to other reputable companies or organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting.
Wait a minute, they’re selling my address and phone numbers? That’s why the service is only $2/month. They’re not in the business of selling digital media, they’re in the business of selling people’s personal information. Getting a “deal” with the university gives them a captive audience (and probably a big database of all your information) that they can resell to the highest bidders.
Of course, you can opt-out of all of this (except the e-mail address bit) by sending an e-mail to the company. There’s no way to do it on their website, no “opt-in” when you sign up. CDigix is betting that’s too much trouble to go through for the majority of its customers.
I don’t really want a music service that does me the favor of getting me in contact with companies I might find interesting. What I really want is the university to stand up the entertainment cartels. But since that’s never going to happen, I would be happy with the university just letting students choose what is best for themselves.
Domain Troubles · 2006-03-10
Last week, one of my domains (umdhub.com) got locked because I had supposedly listed fraudulent contact information in my registration or was using the domain for spam. If you check the WHOIS record, the first allegation is clearly false, and you’ll have to take my word on the second.
For the technologically un-initiated, let me go into a brief digression about domain names. Simply put, a domain name is a name like “google.com” or “cnn.com” that allows people to easily identify a computer on the internet. When computers communicate, they do not use the system of names, instead, they fine one another by a sequence of numbers called IP addresses. To bridge the gap, domain names were developed where a name would be translated to a numerical address. When you request “google.com,” the computer looks up the appropriate numerical address, and then communicates soley via that.
A natural result of this system is that a single address may have many domain names. For example, the address of the machine that had umdhub.com is 129.2.216.191. It also happens to have umd.xenoform.net, and hub.student.umd.edu. When you connect to the server from any of the four methods (directly by address or any of the three names), you are really connecting to the exact same computer.
Historically, we used umd.xenoform.net because I had not yet bought umdhub.com. Today, it is maintained for backwards compatibility for people who are very slow to update their bookmarks. hub.student.umd.edu is the the result of having to choose a name when registering a computer on a residential connection on campus. We encourage everyone to use umdhub.com when dealing with the computer because the other addresses may be discontinued in the future.
In any case, all of this was resolved when I finally got in touch with my registrar. Unfortunately, my registrar would only work with fax. Unfortunately, my registrar is also in Switzerland. Very unfortunately, Fedex/Kinkos sees fit to charge $3.50/page + $6/connect to send a fax internationally. I have to say though, I am very impressed with my registrar, Joker.com. Within a few hours of sending the fax, the domain was unlocked and everything returned to normal, complete with a typically polite Swiss/German apology for the inconvenience.